When you're dealing with any piece of real estate in Massachusetts, you need to Understand The applicable land use regulations and cases. Bobrowski's Handbook of Massachsetts Land Use and Planning Law provides all the insightful analysis and practical, expert advice you need, with detailed coverage of such important issues as: Affordable housing Special permit and variance decisions Zoning in Boston Nonconforming uses and structures Administrative appeal procedures Enforcement requests Building permits Vested rights Agricultural use exemptions Current tests for exactions SLAPP suit procedures Impact fees Civil rights challenges. Helpful tables facilitate convenient case law review, while forms and extensive cross-references add To The book's usefulness.

This book contributes to the discourse on planning theory by accentuating the perspective of public innovation. Extending planning theory's traditional two major perspectives - 'Communicate' and 'Calculate' - the book argues that contemporary planning theory should incorporate 'Innovate' as a third perspective. It highlights the multitude of new perspectives that innovative planning can bring to bear on planning theory, as well as showing how the interplay between the three perspectives - 'Communicate', 'Calculate' and 'Innovate' - can help to address vital issues in contemporary societal development.

Strategic Planning for Public Libraries is a complete planning toolkit. Each purchase comes with a downloadable supplemental folder full of reusable templates, worksheets, as well as real-life examples from other libraries to help guide the reader through the planning process. This book provides a framework that any library, whether it serves urban, suburban, or rural communities, can use as a basis for its strategic planning.

John Friedmann addresses a central question of Western political theory: how, and to what extent, history can be guided by reason. In this comprehensive treatment of the relation of knowledge to action, which he calls planning, he traces the major intellectual traditions of planning thought and practice. Three of these--social reform, policy analysis, and social learning--are primarily concerned with public management. The fourth, social mobilization, draws on utopianism, anarchism, historical materialism, and other radical thought and looks to the structural transformation of society "from below." After developing a basic vocabulary in Part One, the author proceeds in Part Two to a critical history of each of the four planning traditions. The story begins with the prophetic visions of Saint-Simon and assesses the contributions of such diverse thinkers as Comte, Marx, Dewey, Mannheim, Tugwell, Mumford, Simon, and Habermas. It is carried forward in Part Three by Friedmann's own nontechnocratic, dialectical approach to planning as a method for recovering political community.

American communities are changing fast: ethnic minority populations are growing, home ownership is falling, the number of people per household is going up, and salaries are going down. According to Marc Brenman and Thomas W. Sanchez, the planning field is largely unprepared for these fundamental shifts. If planners are going to adequately serve residents of diverse ages, races, and income levels, they need to address basic issues of equity. Planning as if People Matter offers practical solutions to make our communities more livable and more equitable for all residents. While there are many books on environmental justice, relatively few go beyond theory to give real-world examples of how better planning can level inequities. In contrast, Planning as if People Matter is written expressly for planning practitioners, public administrators, policy-makers, activists, and students who must directly confront these challenges. It provides new insights about familiar topics such as stakeholder participation and civil rights. And it addresses emerging issues, including disaster response, new technologies, and equity metrics. Far from an academic treatment, Planning as if People Matter is rooted in hard data, on-the-ground experience, and current policy analysis. In this tumultuous period of economic change, there has never been a better time to reform the planning process. Brenman and Sanchez point the way toward a more just social landscape.

This report provides an annotated list of selected references for the citizen interested in and involved in planning.